


Red Sun

by BitterWheat (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Identity Issues, M/M, Mostly Manga Based, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Psychological Horror, references to season 0, season zero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BitterWheat
Summary: What once had been clashes with what something has become.The shadows are not so easily satisfied.
Relationships: Atem/Mutou Yuugi, Mazaki Anzu | Tea Gardner/Mutou Yuugi, Mutou Yuugi/Yami Yuugi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64





	Red Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of literal ancient work. Non-profit fun only.

The wind is hot, dry, troublingly alive.

He wonders if he’s brought the desert with him, sent scorching sands rippling over Domino’s streets. He recalls the snap of scorched grass beneath his feet as a child, on that terrible year when the Nile refused to swell and the harvest was dead; the land a panorama of shrivelled stalks.

But it is summer. A humid, haunted summer, two years after the door of destiny closed like thunder behind him, on this city and the people and the last, lingering whisper of _shadow game._

He is no more than an echo. His steps leave no din on the empty streets. His cape is a weightless rustle on an unnatural breeze, and it billows behind him in rags of fruitful violet; visible only to him and the powers that skulk at his heels.

The light from which he has ventured had been too bright, too perfect, too bland. Exquisite, peaceful, torturous infinity. A landscape of peace and beauty, but darkness still germinates in the pit of his soul and he finds a strange solace in the familiar company of the shadows. Domino unfurls in front of him, becoming more cleanly sketched with each step. Noisy, flawed, stinking sweatshop of a town. As alive and as greedy as the first time he slunk from the cracks of his puzzle and swung a school bully into wealth infested insanity.

There are lights in the city, strung up high in toxic combustions of colour against a navy sky. The moon hides, shafted in a misty wisp of cloud and the night is alive around him, _in_ him.

He slips closer to his goal.

* * *

“You are the only Yugi Motou in the world.”

Atem smiles; for the first time, actually smiles, and it is open and strange and tender. Yugi feels the firm grip of age-old hands on his shoulders, and this is the first time they’ve actually touched. Not faint, ghost-like whispers of sensations, but actual flesh on flesh and Atem’s fingers clench a little tight, bordering on painful, but Yugi steels himself and allows a smile to prick the edges of his mouth.

Something seems to itch behind Atem’s eyes, seeming to shift and darken, like the familiar beckon of his old shadows. His smile widens, but then, wavers, and he stands a bit too close and his gaze; intense, lingers on each inch of Yugi’s face.

Yugi’s tears dry too quickly.

Yugi allows Jou to close this chapter on their lives with a tearful, sentimental speech and as the Pharaoh looks back one last time, his stare slips by Jou and Honda and Anzu and then, on Yugi, it remains.

As he strides into the light, the royal blue of his jacket spreads and streams out into a cape of royal violet. He is every inch the prince, the Pharaoh. A long line of past servants and family members form a welcoming wall and Yugi looks on after him until the doors rumble shut.

His mentor, his other self, is no more. Past has merged with present and now there is just Atem; golden and god-like and forever. The driven, devoted spectre of the puzzle has floated away on the heels of such a vision and Yugi wonders how he can come to mourn this.

Outside, the sun is stark and brutal. He walks into it none the less, allowing its light to strip away the memory of the Pharaoh’s eyes.

* * *

He is a God.

In life, he was divinity made flesh. Welded by the will of Ra, he sought to end destruction and despair, until fate intervened and memories of heavenly white stone and sun cast like gold on a desert and a father’s plea were swamped by an eternal maze of darkness and doors.

Destiny remade him as a deliverer of justice to the immoral. A vulture unto impure souls, be it a corrupt tomb keeper or a school bully. In the dark, he gorged himself on his instinctive entitlement to bestow judgment, a right so complete and unquestioning; the one thing he’d kept and nurtured from his previous life.

The shadows became second nature. Even the blinding glare of the afterlife could not stifle the dark still wiggling in his veins, and even after everything, after Zorc and a fated duel and the tears on Yugi’s cheeks, the consequences of his isolation still dance inside him and refuse to die.

Sometimes he is the shadow, sometimes he is Yami, and sometimes he is Pharaoh. He’d been shredded long ago, pulled to pieces by ancient magic, reborn and remade through the centuries. The reclaiming of his memories stitched together a recollection of identity, and even with the new knowledge it brought, it clashed with what had once been and what he had actually _become._

The gods reanimated him once last time, to confront the boy who wore his other face. And after the battle, after he sacrificed his namesake, did Heaven unleash its final insult. They delivered him to his past peers as no more than a scrambled spirit; a confusion of memory and shadow, in the form of the King they had adored.

He stands in the centre of town. People mill by in greyscale droves. His other self would have teased him about his Pharaoh garb, laughed at his nerve to mingle the mouldering with the modern. The night is rich and sweet, like nectar, or that could be the cries of old shadow magic caressing the breeze. The boy is near.

He contemplates what he is planning. The torn patchwork of his soul moans; hungry and incomplete.

He is not the boy. He told him that himself. And wasn’t it he, who fought to ease the separation with words of encouragement?

He isn’t the boy. No longer a part of the King of Games. But to a God, that means little.

The history books are immortalized with the gold of his heroics.

Hasn’t he done enough? Isn’t this what he deserves?

* * *

As soon as the puzzle had left his neck, he'd had a desire to _move._

He left Domino behind just as the gates closed on his graduation. It was a city that knew his name too quickly, a city where each arcade and cafe and schoolroom was stamped with memory. He left his game shop, left his old puzzles and Gameboys to go dusty, even left his grandfather who smiled endearingly at Yugi's newfound daring. If he'd known the reason, Yugi wondered if he would have smiled at all.

Yugi staved off desert and dust for his travels, opting instead for Europe and culture and the quaint little pastries Anzu had always adored. A bemused Arthur Hopkins agreed to accompany him on this new journey of discovery, his eyebrows raised at Yugi's unexpected company. Together, they explored the ruins of Rome, the rain beaten castles of England, the cultural extravaganza of France. Soon, they breached the coast and shot off to America, Arthur excited by his new protégé and Yugi's mind starving for distraction.

That year, he scrambled over rock faces, snapped shots of each crumbling temple, researched and ran and attempted to remedy the unnatural lightness around his neck. On his heels, a foul wind seemed to beckon, singeing the ends of his troubled mind and how could he tell Mr Hopkins that he felt _hunted?_

As those mighty doors had lured the Pharaoh to white drenched peace, it was with the closing of those very doors that bestowed upon Yugi a feeling of complete, intoxicating freedom. It was frightening and vast and indefinable, spilling inside his chest in a strange ache, closing around the crushing weight of his own grief and transforming it into something else entirely.

The shadow games were gone. His second face had evaporated into the image of a long-dead boy king and joined his rightful place beside his father and friends. There was no more need to fear, no more reason to grieve. Everything was at rights. Yugi could face this pain, face this newfound strength, and pull it forward into the opening dawn of his own future. This was his story now.

But the uneasy feel of phantom fingers made flesh cutting into his shoulders remained a feverish pull on his dreams, and the hard, hungry look of his other self...no, the _Pharaoh_ as he ventured forth into his long-overdue death twisted in Yugi's mind and he wondered why it made him feel afraid.

He was paranoid. Paranoid about the very one who granted him this courage and confidence.

Arthur Hopkins, elated by their year together, offered to take him to Egypt before they returned to Domino.

Yugi had smiled, remained silent, and booked the plane tickets back to Japan.

* * *

His followers believe he is entitled to whatever path he chooses to take, whatever long flung possession he can return to reclaim. They lower themselves at his feet, even as he welcomes them as dear, equal companions, but their words and actions warm him and power his ongoing mission.

He loves his father, even if the inner sanctums of his eyes are worn and weary, his smiles tight and mysterious. Yes, this Pharaoh does love his father, even if his whims are soft and sacrificing, lacking his personal touch of poetic hell. But he has surpassed his father, even if those words will never leave his lips; he has surpassed each and every Pharaoh before and after his reign. Now he is the guardian of the morning and evening stars, the central sweep of the majesty of their legacy.

So why does a corner of his heart tug into the mischievous, malcontented prince from before?

What would he say now, to the feral eyed creature that came crawling from the cracks of the puzzle, on that fateful night? What would he say to the gentle-faced boy with plasters on his face from his routine beating?

* * *

They sit in the local Starbucks.

He sits taut; tortured. Anzu rubs her thumb against the lid of her milkshake and braves a smile.

She looks a little small in her clothes; her bones seem to jut violently from her upper chest, the light reflecting off her eyes seeming fitful and a little lost.

They speak of things. Little things, common things, like the weather and Grandpa and the comforting pull of infant memory. He begins to smile a little easier and his fingers quiver near the edge of her wrist.

“Hey, Anzu,” Yugi feels as if he should be saying something else, but he’s always felt this way around her, so he ignores it. “Do you think about him, sometimes?”

She closes her mouth. Her brow tightens at the corners before her shoulders relax and she nods dutifully.

“Of course,” It’s the right thing to say, but Anzu has always excelled at that. “I do think about him.” And then, just for good measure; “We all do. We all miss him, Yugi.”

Is Atem missing? Truly? Yugi had run as soon as his feet had hit his home’s soil. He’d barely had time to register the hole in his head, the cool of a chain against his neck, the crushing blow of suddenly _nothing,_ and then that calling _courage_ he couldn’t explain. But was Atem gone? Truly vanished off onto another plane, to pluck bloated pink grapes from rich vines and suck honey from the field of reeds? To bask in glory gilded sunshine, draped in finery and winter white linen?

“Yugi?” A shockwave as a cool pressure is laid over his palm. Anzu peers over the leaning dent of her straw and frowns. “Is everything alright?”

“No.” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it. He swallows; throat dry, voice hoarse. “I feel weird. Badly assembled.” The blue of Anzu’s eyes intensify and his fingers curl over hers. “It’s so strange. Like a puzzle I couldn’t figure out as a kid. I just feel I’m going around in circles, not really knowing why I’m here.”

It’s unlike him, and they both know it.

And he’s forgotten who he’s talking to, for he recalls a Ferris wheel and a cartouche on a shaking hand, but a year and a half has passed and Anzu’s eyes are bright and bold and _wise._

“It’ll get better.” Anzu’s hand finds his face, and oh god, she thinks he’s _grieving._ But something else pinches the corners of her mouth, and she’s always been way too insightful for her own good. She clears her throat. “Everything will be fine in time, you’ll see.”

* * *

After Egypt, after Atem, America suddenly seemed jewelled and shining on the horizon and her infatuation fled from her as simply as a snake shedding its skin.

As soon as he had gone, as soon as she stumbled outside with the sun stinging her eyes, there was a sudden wash of air tripping over the dunes. Darkness and dust were issued away with the rising sun and an unexpected relief unravelled from her shoulders and trickled, like cool water, down her back.

The pain was still there, but it was aching and vague, and by the time they had returned to civilization, she struggled to remember what it actually _was._ It had been bizarre, beauteous magic that had strangled and stroked and tortured her insides so slowly, that girlish _wanting_ of the unattainable, of wishing to prevent the inevitable; of what had been _right_ and _appropriate_ for his fate. 

She was far too mature for all of that now.

They were accomplished. They were finished. The nightmares, the pressures, the pain. All had evaporated into the light that called Atem home.

And now it was their turn to make a difference, to map their futures.

Yugi’s fingers brushed hers as they had left the airport. His eyes were blank, reflecting nothing, and in a sudden shiver, she swore she saw something timelessly _old_ scamper beneath his iris. But then he turned to smile at her, and she felt the shake in his legs, in his chest, in his arms.

For the first time since they were children, she held his hand, and she held it hard.

* * *

That night, Yugi leaves Anzu in the Starbucks, and they smile pained smiles and swap numbers.

Yugi goes home to Grandpa, who is already snoring upstairs, and Yugi, too tired to even think, retires to bed aswell.

It’s unusually warm in his bedroom, close and bizarrely tight on his thin chest, and he throws open the windows and sleeps with the covers half-mast around his legs.

There is a shadow in his room that brings comfort, brings memory, brings magic, brings death.

* * *

Anzu is phoned in the morning, and for the first time in years, she smells the burning of a convict’s flesh in her nostrils.

She then remembers green light and darkness; the form of a Celtic warrior, sword high, charging at the rotting carcass of a dragon. Of how Atem had flexed his fingers; once, twice, knuckles white as Yugi said goodbye. How she, so goddamn insightful, hadn’t seen the calm, strange alternative to grief setting within the Pharaoh’s eyes.

Jou won’t listen and Honda just drives aimlessly on his bike and Grandpa sits and stares at the wall, defiantly senile.

Yugi is dragged back to sun-washed stone and grandeur and how kind it was of Atem to let them have more than a year at least. Somewhere in her dreams, she hears screams, but she isn’t sure.

She exhausts herself with tears, and wonders why she never saw the heat of the sun, red and scorching, reflected in the watery turn of Yugi’s eye.


End file.
